‘Teen Titans Go! To the Movies’ not always making the right move for DC Universe

By Carla Meyer

Updated
2:04 pm PDT, Thursday, July 26, 2018

"Teen Titans GO! To the Movies" is a film based on the television cartoon featuring young version of DC Comics superheroes.

"Teen Titans GO! To the Movies" is a film based on the television cartoon featuring young version of DC Comics superheroes.

Photo: Warner Bros. Animation

Photo: Warner Bros. Animation

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"Teen Titans GO! To the Movies" is a film based on the television cartoon featuring young version of DC Comics superheroes.

"Teen Titans GO! To the Movies" is a film based on the television cartoon featuring young version of DC Comics superheroes.

Photo: Warner Bros. Animation

‘Teen Titans Go! To the Movies’ not always making the right move for DC Universe

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Sometimes hilarious, oft-times presumptuous, “Teen Titans Go! To the Movies” plays like a 90-minute advertisement for the DC Comics universe to which its young, animated protagonists belong.

The story hinges on the Titans’ (from Cartoon Network’s “Teen Titans Go!” series) efforts to get a blockbuster Hollywood movie made about themselves.

Teen crime fighters Raven (voiced by Tara Strong), Beast Boy (Greg Cipes), Cyborg (Khary Payton), Starfire (Hynden Walch) and especially self-involved Titans leader Robin (Scott Menville) — one-time Batman sidekick, still a full-time twerp — want to be taken seriously as superheroes. The way to do this, according to the film, is to be the subject of a big-budget movie, as the Titans’ DC stablemates Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman have been.

So the movie is meta, and in-jokey, and irritating in presuming that the 4-year-olds who come to see a PG-rated film will understand jokes based on DC’s professional rivalry with Marvel.

They don’t. Children at a recent “Teen Titans” preview screening had to ask their parents what “DC” is. Then one asked “Who is he?” when Marvel legend Stan Lee made one of his trademark cameos — this time in animated form, in a DC movie.

The kids’ cluelessness was heartening. If they had understood the insider jokes, it would mean they probably had seen comic-book films too violent to be appropriate for them. Or worse, it would indicate that comic-book films’ takeover of Hollywood is now complete, and kindergartners understand studio politics by osmosis.

Youngsters still can enjoy “Teen Titans” for its abundant scatological humor — comedy gold to a 5-year-old — and catchy 1980s musical homages, including the synth-laden number “Upbeat Inspirational Song About Life.” Meant as parody, the song sincerely leaves everyone in the audience feeling good.

Directed by Aaron Horvath (also a co-screenwriter) and Peter Rida Michail, “Teen Titans” contains some truly inspired comic moments, most of them poking fun at the more ridiculous elements of DC Comics’ hero origin stories. But younger audience members probably will not get this humor, either.

“Teen Titans” never reaches that sweet spot where adult and kid humor align in a single gag. The spot Pixar movies always reach, and that “The Lego Batman Movie” — a similarly in-jokey film centered on a DC character — hit as well.

It comes close with Slade (Lego Batman Will Arnett, going villainous here), a would-be evil mastermind who dresses like Deadpool and resents all comparisons to Deadpool. Arnett out-smarms Ryan Reynolds (not easy) and adds his signature undercurrents of danger and insecurity. Slade is goofy enough to entertain kids and clever enough to intrigue adults, but he is more dastardly than funny.